Sunday Morning Hot Tea - No. 32
Me vs. My Brain and Seizing Moira Rose's Assets
Welcome to Sunday Morning Hot Tea where I write about a little something up top then answer a legal question for you down below. This week, what’s going on between my ears? Plus, how come the feds seized all of the Roses’ assets except for Moira’s legendary looks?
In this edition:
Topic of the Week – The Whimsical Frustrating Space Between My Ears
Legal Question – Repossessing the Roses
Brain Matter
As I sat with my former seventh-grade English teacher turned grown-up friend, Kay, at brunch the other day, we bonded over our shared disdain for a man at a table just adjacent to us. He was bald, maybe 50, wearing a navy polo shirt with some embroidery on the chest. We were at Café Brazil, a local coffeehouse chain, and this man had brought to the table with him a venti paper coffee cup from Starbucks.
He was a joined by a pair of younger people, possibly his college-aged children, and casually sipped his coffee while the server came to take their order. Once the food was delivered, we watched as he took his then-empty coffee cup and set it on a perfectly clean table beside him.
“Can you believe him?” Kay asked.
“He should be arrested,” I said.
We seethed together. Then I thought better of it.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to judge,” I said. “Maybe he has a horrific stomach condition, and he needs special milk – the kind of oat milk that only Starbucks has and that this place doesn’t carry, and so that’s why he brought it in.” She wasn’t convinced, and neither was I.
In truth, the man probably didn’t have any problems with his asshole. He just was one. But the problem I have with my brain is that it moves a thousand miles a minute, so after looking at him once, I’d created a whole backstory for him.
“It must be exhausting to be around me,” I said.
Kay is one of those rare people, just a handful outside of my family, who have known me since I was little. I first took her class in seventh grade, when I was just 12 years old. That first year, she let all of her students choose any work of fiction to read for a book report. It was 2001, and Harry Potter was the new hot thing. Dozens of students brought in crisp new copies of Sorcerer’s Stone for their project.
My mother, instead, took me to downtown Mesquite, a four-block square of ramshackle buildings. Inside the used bookstore, Paperbacks Plus, I chose a novel from the fiction section. The cover pictured a tan man with piercing eyes. The text over the photograph read “American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.”
Later, I asked Kay whether she was worried about me reading that book at that age.
“If your mother approved,” she reasoned, “I wasn’t going to discourage you from reading.” She was right. It was hard enough to get me through one page, much less a whole book.
“Did you think I had ADHD back then?” I asked. She said there were a few students whose behavior she and the counselor had discussed, and I was one of them.
“I never worried about you, though,” she said.
“I learned how to ride the lightning,” I said, and she laughed. (Author note: yes, yes. I understand this phrase also means dying by electric chair. For me, it’s a way to describe how it feels to live with my brain.)
“That’s a good way to put it,” she said. “Not all kids could do that.”
Truth be told, I couldn’t do it either. Not for a real long time. I recently found a manilla envelope with my name on it. Inside, I found six, single-spaced typed pages from 2009. They were my answers to a counselor’s quiz from college when I was finally formally diagnosed with ADHD. I had forgotten a lot of the incidents I included on the form. Some, I still can’t recall. In my answers, I described myself as “bothering” or “annoying” my then-boyfriend several times. Those I do remember.
On the question regarding the inability to cue the monitoring or the passage of time, I wrote:
Without a clock in view, I lose track of time. Fifteen minutes and five hours feel the same to me. Sometimes I’m on the internet, and all of a sudden, it’s dark outside. This causes trouble at work. The end of my shift will creep up, and I am left scrambling, doing stuff in a rush.
Still true! It’s why I keep an analog timer on my desk that marks the passage of time with a highlighted clock-face.
On and on the questions went, and after each one, the counselor had matched answers from my questionnaire with the corresponding symptoms. I was a walking-talking DSM-5 criteria list.
Even so many years later, those symptoms haven’t gone away.
Last week, I lost it after I lost something. I should actually say, after I lost something again. I lose a lot of things – sometimes small things like a scrap of paper with a good idea or a reminder scribbled on it. Other times, I lose big things. Important things. Grown-up things. Like my phone, my glasses, my keys, my passport, my escrow reimbursement check from the title company.
Before ever being diagnosed, I lost and forgot just about every item ever entrusted to me. As a kid, my mom’s constant refrain to me was, “You’d lose your head if it wasn’t hooked on.” This was true. Time and again, my parents would trust me with an important item – my dad’s comb, the family camera, the check to replenish my school lunch account – and each time the item would never make it to its intended destination.
As soon as I would leave the school building and climb into my mother’s Dodge Caravan, school left my mind with the slamming of the van’s door. All my attention shifted to whatever was in front of me at home: a TV show, a game, dinner, a Teen Beat Magazine featuring the Backstreet Boys. School work would not cross my mind again until I was back in my seat in class, blank worksheet in hand, and pit in my stomach.
If I ever managed to do the homework, I may instead leave the results at home, most often on the coffee table in the living room. I soon established an effective pattern for document recovery: fake illness. Pretending I was so sick that I needed medicine meant I got to call my mom. I’d grab my guts, double over, and moan so that I would be sent to the nurse’s office. Once there, I’d writhe until she called my mother.
“The nurse says you have a stomachache,” my mom would say on the other end of the receiver.
“I do,” I would lie. “Can you bring me some medicine?”
“Where is it?” she would ask, exasperated, both of us knowing “medicine” was code for the assignment she needed to smuggle into the building. To her credit, she always bailed me out. And if she was not available, my dad would take her place. He worked nights, leaving him available during the day to carry out my homework heists, creating, like my mother did, covert ways to slide the assignment to me with the finesse of a pickpocket.
My memory didn’t improve much in the intervening years. Then that counselor in college finally gave me a name for what I knew I had for years – ADHD. Each time my then-boyfriend would ask, “What is wrong with you?” as I forgot to fold clothes or lost my transit pass, I had no real answer.
After the diagnosis, at least I had a way to explain it. I could explain why I lost time reading old high school essay assignments I found in a box under my bed and missed the bus which made me late for our date. Or why I zoned out so hard that I actually fell asleep during the math portion of the SATs (I did bubble in my name, which I am convinced netted me the 200 points of legend). It explained why I counted the floors of the Sears Tower out the window of my LSAT testing center rather than answering the logic questions.
I had no solution yet, but there was, at the bare minimum, a why.
In law school, I learned ways to cope so I could get by. I would keep digital copies of everything and save it all both locally and in the cloud, saving myself from leaving outlines or notebooks on any coffee table. I relied on friends, too, who sometimes bailed me out with case notes when the professor inevitably called on me after I forgot to read a case.
Sometimes I could pull up online notes, simultaneously reading, processing, and speaking with a plausible sense of authority, a skill that I would later learn is not shared by everyone. This worked most of the time. But there was one professor, Bridge, who sat in the back of the room and would peep on students’ laptop screens. His position foiled my Google/read scheme.
One class, I found myself unprepared and called on by Bridge. Without the online case brief staring back at me from my screen, I was hosed. My forgetfulness had me flailing. Exasperated under his hammering, I finally blurted out, “I don’t know, man.” In hindsight, this is quite funny, ridiculous really. At the time, however, my face burned.
I navigated my way through law school and passed the bar with a combination of good ol’ fashioned hyperfocus and over-preparing due to extreme fear of failure and anxiety.
Eventually, I ended up at a big ass law firm, or “big law” it’s called. For many students, big law is the pinnacle. The dream. Six-figure starting salary, five-figure bonus, your name attached to a place so prestigious. For me, it was a nightmare. The extremely high stakes, the lack of sleep, and the boring underlying subject matter swirled together into a perfect storm that sent my ADHD into over-drive.
“Have this prepared for our 9 A.M. meeting,” a partner might tell me about some document or assignment. I would work late, leave after dark, head home, work some more, pass out. Before I knew it, 9 A.M. would roll around, and I would find myself empty handed in a conference room, overhead lights boiling down like an interrogation room, reflecting off the partner’s shiny bald head.
“Where is it?” he would ask. I had to confess I had forgotten. “Are you kidding me?” His question buttressed by an incredulous laugh.
Naw, my dude. I was not kidding.
Another time he thrust a document at me and began barking instructions at me to make some changes. No written corrections on the document for me to enter in to the computer. No emailed instructions. He just stopped me in a hallway and began reciting them out loud like a soliloquy. I asked him a handful of times to slow down so that I could take some notes.
“You can’t just remember what I am saying?” he snapped. I told him I could not and if he wanted my help, I would need to write it all down. He scoffed, grumbled, gave me a dramatic sigh, and yanked the document out of my hand, saying, “Here just let me do it.”
I fell into a stress-fail cycle. This was the name I gave it. It went something like:
Long hours = can’t sleep = no time to work out = eat trash = drink alcohol = brain malfunction = distracted = forget = fail at work = stress out = more work = long hours… rinse, repeat.
I also realized, apart from the pro bono work, I just did not give a shit about what we were doing. The people I worked with were mostly great, but interesting co-workers don’t magically make something so dull suddenly interesting. Imagine you meet a really nice person at a bar, and they take you back to their place. There, they show you an extensive collection of pencil shavings.
“This pile is from a Ticonderoga number 2, manually sharpened!” Snoozeville.
No matter their level of enthusiasm, unless it turns your crank, too, it’s not going to hold your interest. And, in fact, for someone with a brain like mine – boredom makes all of my symptoms worse.
One time I had to read like 300 pages of information about a company that made metal fasteners. I am not making this up. They owned machines that pressed screws and then sold those screws to companies who made like airplanes and cars. There’s not anything more boring on the planet than that. On top of the stress-fail cycle, my symptoms were being actively exacerbated by the subject matter I was supposed to study.
Symptoms all aflare, now imagine you’re in a meeting. Important things are being discussed, maybe even things you remotely care about. You’re trying to listen, but your brain is also singing the theme song to the 1993 situation comedy television show The Nanny, starring Fran Drescher. You wonder if Fran Fine and Mr. Sheffield ever got married. How did that show end? Also, did you know that Fran Drescher has been making weird social media posts recently? Did the Mr. Sheffield actor age well? I haven’t seen him in awhile. I feel like he was in a movie where he played a bad guy, but I can’t remember the name of it. Was he actually British in real life? Y’all remember how Fran Drescher was in that movie Beautician and the Beast, and her mom was feeding chicken meat to chickens? Then Fran goes, “It’s like silence of the chickens!” But that doesn’t really make sense because in Silence of the Lambs, the lambs don’t eat other lambs (at least not that I remember?) It was the humans that were eating each other. Oh shit, I just missed fifteen minutes of this conference call, and I was supposed to be taking notes.
You can see how that would not go well.
My brain is better now. I quit the law firm. I have time to sleep, which helps alleviate my symptoms. I also have time to exercise or go for walks early in the day, which also helps. I now work with a business partner who loves me so much that she researched “ways to support your ADHD spouse” in order to work better with my brain. I get to write about and talk on the microphone about whatever interests me. I can work whatever hours work for me. Professionally, I am now fulfilled and supported. Seemed like I was really riding the lightning, as I told Kay.
Thus brings us to the irony of last Wednesday.
When I realized I had lost a check from my health insurance company and a packet of information on signing up for health coverage, I got stuck in a much worse cycle than the stress-fail cycle. It was the mistake//self-hate spiral. As soon as I realized I had lost the envelopes, the self-berating began.
I am the literal dumbest person on the planet. Adults do not lose important documents or forget things that are so important. I hate myself. I hate my brain.
I was so overwhelmed with the thoughts, I began saying them out loud where my fiancé, Paris, could hear. He also has ADHD, but I treat the symptoms and behaviors of his ADHD – like losing the key to the lockbox that contains all of our important papers, for instance – with love and patience. Somehow, when I am the culprit, I don’t give myself that same grace.
I am lucky because he gives me enough grace for the both of us. Upon hearing my negative self-talk, he politely disagreed then wrapped me in a big hug. This short-circuited the spiral long enough for me to pull out my phone and ask Google what I was wondering silently to myself: “How do I stop hating myself because of my ADHD?”
A number of results came up. They were ok, some blogs and articles, but nothing revolutionary. I put down my phone and picked up the purple leather-bound journal beside my bed. It’s my gratitude journal, and I try to write nightly what I am thankful for. That night, I tried turning the tables on the mistake//self-hate spiral. I wrote down what I was grateful for – Paris, for his patience and understanding. And for my brain – for the good side of it, for all that it can do – forgetting for a moment what it couldn’t.
What it can do is pretty remarkable. It can do two things at once. While writing, it can conjure multiple ideas at once, then place them neatly on a shelf as my hand scrambles to catch up. It lets me tell jokes on the spot and make strangers laugh, not just on stage but even in places like the aisle at the grocery store. It lets me co-host a weekly show where all the jokes are made up and lets me keep up with my quick and witty co-host.
Yes, it also loses things. Even important grown-up things. It forgets to pay bills if they are not on auto-pay. It forgets birthdays and anniversaries and to text people back. It misses appointments without multiple reminders, both physical and digital. It cannot conceptualize a project without seeing a finished product as an example. It freezes when I am faced with multiple tasks all at once or a task with no clear steps. It wanders while reading and does better while listening to music or doing something else at the same time. It is how it is. I cannot change it, so why have I wasted so much time hating it?
The next morning, I turned to my Osho Zen Tarot deck, a deck of tarot cards based on the wisdom of Zen. I did what I usually do – shuffle it three times, cut it three times, then stack them back together. I placed my hands on the deck and silently asked my question: How can I stop hating that part of my brain that fails me sometimes?
As is always the case, the perfect card was waiting on top for me. The Two of Water - Friendliness. The image printed on the card showed two trees, side by side, with separate trunks, but with their branches intertwined. I read the card’s entry in the accompanying book:
“The essence of true friends – mature, easy with each other, natural. There is no urgency about their connection, no neediness, no desire to change the other into something else…A love that is truly unconditional, without expectations or demands.”
Damn. Got me.
The part of my brain that drops the ball sometimes will forever be a part of me. I can help it out – prompt it with calendars, planners, reminder lists on white boards, and apps. I can track the time with my bright blue desktop timer. I can keep my water from being disconnected again due to non-payment by keeping the bill on auto-pay.
But I am learning to accept that the forgetful part is also what affords me the other part – the magical part that can read, process, and talk all at once. The part that lets me write and improvise and be creative.
I can’t get rid of the ball dropping side without shutting off the wildly creative side. They have to co-exist – mature, easy with each other, natural. No desire to change the one side into something else. I am learning to love them both unconditionally, without expectations or demands, but with a stack of planners and ton of Google calendar invites.
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Song Inspiration: This week, I listened to Fire Escape by Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness while writing this.
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QUESTIONS FROM YOU – Repossessing the Roses
This week’s question is from Kelly via the form. Kelly asks:
In the 2nd episode of the Girardis, you discuss how items up to a certain value do/don’t get repossessed. This made me think of Schitt’s Creek. The Roses (mostly Moira) were still in possession of many designer clothes and jewelry that I would imagine would be within the price range of being repossessed. Would they realistically have been able to keep those items?
Great question, Kelly!
We recently covered the legal battle being waged by victims of tragedy against the formerly prominent trial lawyer Tom Girardi and his law firm, Girardi Keese. He stands accused of misappropriating millions of dollars in client and lender assets to support his Real Housewife of Beverly Hills, Erika Jayne’s, extravagant lifestyle. You can get the full scoop in the two parts from Sinisterhood here in Part One and Part Two.
On to the Roses…
I love this question because I love any excuse to re-watch Schitt’s Creek. A couple of important things to set up first.
WHERE IS SCHITT’S CREEK?
Tom Girardi and Girardi Keese are both going through bankruptcy proceedings under United States law. What he can/cannot keep is determined by the Bankruptcy Code and state law. Girardi is in California, so the list of items he gets to keep is determined under California law. Some examples of items he could possibly keep (depending on some factors that are outside the scope of this newsletter but which are discussed in the second episode) include:
A home worth $175,000,
A car worth $3,325,
Jewelry and art worth $8,725, and
Retirement accounts worth $1.3 million.
The Rose family lives in Canada. Yes, Schitt’s Creek is in Canada. Though there was some hemming and hawing at first, Dan Levy eventually confirmed it to BuzzFeed News. Additionally, the “people from the government” who ring the Roses’ doorbell in the pilot episode are wearing blue jackets with “REVENUE AGENCY” printed on the back. The tax-collecting authority in Canada is called the Revenue Agency.
In the United States, the tax agency is called the Internal Revenue Service, and their jackets are printed with “IRS Revenue Officer” or “IRS-CID Police.” CID is the Criminal Investigation Division. Using the clue of the jackets and Dan Levy’s proclamation, we’ll look at this question under Canadian law.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ROSES?
In the first five minutes of the pilot episode, Johnny Rose calls a person named Eli a “son of a bitch.” Turns out Eli was the family’s business manager who was like “family” and was in charge of the Roses’ finances. The Revenue Agency officer then tells Johnny, “Eli really did a number, Johnny. He took everything,” and explains that Eli has run off to the Cayman Islands.
The phrase “He took everything” indicates to me that their business manager stole the majority of their assets. The Netflix episode description also states that “their business manager loots their family fortune,” which indicates to me that Eli both took the cash and left a big ol’ tax bill, especially since Johnny also says, “He was our business manager. He was supposed to pay taxes.”
The Revenue Agency officer then tells the Roses that there was a “very small amount set aside” for the family and also “one asset the government has allowed [the Roses] to retain” – the town of Schitt’s Creek.
Since Eli took “everything” – presumably their cash – then whatever physical property the Roses had left would be what the Canadian government would go after to satisfy the debt of unpaid taxes. Let’s discuss how that works.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU STIFF THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT?According to the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA), “Any amount you owe is payable in full immediately when you're assessed.” If the Roses failed to pay the CRA in a timely fashion, they were charged “compound daily interest at the prescribed rate on any amount owing.” Whatever amount the Roses owed was also subject to a daily interest rate, so their tax bill ballooned up even higher.
Since the Roses did not pay the outstanding debt to the CRA or contact the CRA to discuss payment plans, the CRA was entitled to take legal action to collect the unpaid amount. That legal action could have been garnishment, which means the CRA would go into bank accounts and seize the funds. Since Eli apparently took all of the Roses’ money and fled the country, that would not likely be successful.
Since the garnishment wouldn’t work so well, the CRA could put a lien on the Roses’ home or other large assets. That means, if the Roses tried to sell the property, the tax debt would get paid first.
What happened in the pilot episode was even more severe than just a lien. It is called a seizure of assets. First, the CRA would have gone to court and gotten a written command or formal order in favor of the Crown (the Canadian government) that allowed the CRA to seize and sell the Roses assets and property. Under Canadian law, the CRA can do this without notifying the Roses. If you think about it, it makes sense. You know you’re supposed to pay your taxes. Although they relied on their “business manager,” the liability still falls on the Roses as the taxpayers.
On the CRA website the agency states that it will seize property like: “your car, boat, artwork, cottage, rental property, or personal residence.”
Lock up your cottages, y’all. The CRA ain’t messing around.
After the CRA seized the Roses’ assets, it would sell them off to pay both the tax debt owed and all of the costs associated with selling the assets. If the sale proceeds didn’t satisfy the whole tax debt, then the Roses would still be liable to pay the remaining amount. Tax debts are not dischargeable in bankruptcy, either.
The Canadian Broadcasting Company recently reported that asset freezes and seizures were on the rise, with the CRA using provisions of the Criminal Code to enforce tax debts. Since tax evasion is technically a crime, then money retained and not used to pay taxes are fruits of that crime.
So, to the question…
Would the Roses realistically have been able to keep those items?
During the pandemonium of the asset seizure, Johnny shouts at Moira, “We’ve got 15 minutes to collect our personals.” Of the assets being seized in the house, it appeared to be large piece of furniture, statues, and large pieces of jewelry and expensive designer bags, not personal items like clothes or shoes.
When the family arrives in the town, they have luggage, duffle bags, some cardboard boxes, and cases containing Moira’s extensive wig collection.
The CRA agents came to seize assets of value that could be sold to satisfy the Roses’ tax debt. Their enormous house and various other properties would probably make the largest dent, then the larger, more valuable personal property pieces would be the next most valuable.
Though they wear some incredible designer clothes, taxing authorities don’t generally seize clothing. In the United States, the IRS will also allow individual taxpayers to keep “tools necessary for the trade, business or profession of the taxpayer,” which could arguably include their phones and laptops.
As for Moira’s jewelry, it’s not as recognizable as her designer clothes. For instance, the iconic panther brooch was created by the production designer, Debra Hansen. It later sold at a charity auction for $3,200, but that’s likely because it was a part of the show and not because of its inherent value.
Many of the other pieces were either from the costume designer’s own collection or were costume jewelry, though there were some finer pieces layered in as well, according to this interview with Debra Hanson.
If Moira somehow successfully hid those assets and the tax debt got paid off with everything else the CRA took, she would be able to keep those items. Also, she’s Moira fricken Rose. She can do whatever she wants. PROOF: Check out this iconic collection of legendary Moira moments.
I hope that answers your question, Kelly!
Got a question? Submit it here. They can be legal what-if questions, questions on current events, or questions about the legality of actions in TV shows or movies you’ve seen. I never ever want to answer your personal legal questions, so don't send those. Love you, but I don’t do that.
Until next week, that’s the tea and fold in the cheese.
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